Events in recent years have unfolded in ways that are quite unexpected to many. First, we heard of how the forestals of Eleusis entered the City of Targossas and butchered a dwarven labourer in some gruesome blood ritual. This jarred badly with what we historically know of the forestals. Forestals that many of us even know intimately thru long standing ties. One cannot help but wonder if there was a mistake made somewhere in the reporting of the event - that perhaps it was some deviant group that did the act?

Equally surprising is the Targossas response. On the public board, we see them use words such as "pointless", "saddening", "wasteful", etc. We see attempts by the Targossian to reason and to illustrate why such an act to be incongruent with our collective experience and perception of actual reality on so many surfaces. Nowhere to be found is the tiresome attempts at verbal one-upmanship followed by vehement promises of vengence as we have long come to expect to hear in such situations.

Is there Targossian trickery at play here? This is not the Targossas we know or come to expect. It is certainly not the behavour of bloodthirsty zealots grabbing any chance for more action. Not only did the Targossians not take the bait the forestals left out(You can almost hear the disappointment in the forestal's reply on the board - "No military response,...."), they actually took the trouble to allow those Eleusians who denounce the blood ritual to register their persons for resumed access to the city and its facilities. Though it does not take much for anyone to guess that the strange ritual to be contrived by the few in power and not the general Eleusian populace, the fact that Targossas did not jump on the chance to condemn the whole but to actually facilitate those Eleusians affected negatively by the actions of their leaders is simply mind-boggling.

Is this some Targossian stratagem to transfer out the guys-everyone-loves-to-hate stigma that has hung around the Good faction from since the days of Shallam now that another faction appears to be volunteering to take it on with their discordant acts, patchy reasoning and careless warmongering on three fronts? Or perhaps there is a much simpler explanation in all this: Targossas is having some good (as in intelligent) people at its helm now. Its leaders are trying to adopt the voice of reason, which opens them as valid partners for useful diplomacy with other nation states. Perhaps now is the time we review our feelings on the faction of Good. Targossas is not Shallam. It is not even the Targossas of yesteryears. The zealotry they pride themselves in may not match the worst images we conjure in our minds with that word.

Delias
Writing for the Defrabricator

Penned by my hand on the 2nd of Sarapin, in the year 680 AF.